Style

   Style, no matter how good it is, cannot overcome flawed substance. I always knew this, but only today did I realized to how large an extent substance extended. I always thought that substance was only the core idea at the center of a story, and the style how the core is exposed. But there's a reason why amateur high school video productions of Beowulf are often hilarious and professional productions designed solely to grub money from children are often a mixed bag.

   The best thing to do, of course, would be to start with the seed, the core idea, and expand on it from there, flesh it out, explore the ramifications of the milieu. We see style and substance become one, at this level. At the core, the message must be the messenger. I always knew this, as well. Bottom line, though, style is that which you can see, substance is the thing that's being told by the style.

   It's always best to build up a good substance, the thing to be told, before working on how to tell it. Everyone has their own approach, a topic that maybe I'll elaborate on later, so style comes naturally, and substance must be worked on. If you throw together a crap world even the highest production value to bring this world to life won't hide the unevenness underneath. Not that production value can't also kill a good core, but that's something other, because it chiefly has to do with whether people take it seriously as it's meant to be taken. The production value has to be high and professional-looking for people to take it seriously. (Getting back to the high school English class example, this is why you don't see many of those in theaters, though they're often better than many of Hollywood's own interpretation of these events.)

   I suppose that's a good place to leave off. We'll return to these tomorrow, eh?